Believing entirely on common sense can be very naive. The worst is, we won't know when the common sense is wrong while it appears to be self-evident right thing to do! For instance, look at this study published in HBR. When asked to rate, 600 odd managers who participated in this survey based research said number one motivator was "Recognition for good work (either public or private)”. And they rated" sense of progress" as last factor for motivation.
The study proved them all wrong. Look at the chart below. Go to the summary of the article.
source: HBR- Break through Ideas
Moral of the story: Give employees tools to connect to larger picture and track their progress against their contribution to this Big picture;
In my opinion, one of the most powerful aspects of performance management is to be able to provide sense of progress for large number of employees, preferably all employees. It was possibly impossible 10 years ago without IT for 500+ employees organization. Now it is not. It is easily within the reach of every company big or small. How exactly employee is suppose to feel this sense of progress? No lets not use IT the wrong way. Just by setting goals for 20,000 employees in a fancy software package with Facebook like updates is not performance management and does not provide sense progress.
Lets consider following questions
Do you track the progress you make against your strategic goals?
Is their a kind of agreed upon measure method on how you track the progress against these strategic goals?
Do you do that consistently and at regular intervals? Not in once in 12 months. You would have long forgotten your goals by then!
Are you measuring the right things not things that can be measured!
Repeat these questions to your team members
Repeat these questions to every member of the organization including employees of your key suppliers
A case in point
Recently we worked with one of the leading retail companies in India. We implemented balanced scorecard system for their sales department with over 200 odd sales executives spread across India. One of the scores now people had to maintain was the number of new dealers appointed in A class towns. Within 3 months, company was executing lot of dealer contracts. Simple, as sales people started tracking their numbers on how many dealer deals they brought to the table they were able to know where they were against the goals and they were immediately motivated to fill the gap.
I can site hundreds of such example from my experience in implementing such as system. One of our flagship clients United Breweries could achieve its ambitious sales from new products due to such a clear track on sales of new products at sales executive level.
The study proved them all wrong. Look at the chart below. Go to the summary of the article.
source: HBR- Break through Ideas
Moral of the story: Give employees tools to connect to larger picture and track their progress against their contribution to this Big picture;
In my opinion, one of the most powerful aspects of performance management is to be able to provide sense of progress for large number of employees, preferably all employees. It was possibly impossible 10 years ago without IT for 500+ employees organization. Now it is not. It is easily within the reach of every company big or small. How exactly employee is suppose to feel this sense of progress? No lets not use IT the wrong way. Just by setting goals for 20,000 employees in a fancy software package with Facebook like updates is not performance management and does not provide sense progress.
Lets consider following questions
Do you track the progress you make against your strategic goals?
Is their a kind of agreed upon measure method on how you track the progress against these strategic goals?
Do you do that consistently and at regular intervals? Not in once in 12 months. You would have long forgotten your goals by then!
Are you measuring the right things not things that can be measured!
Repeat these questions to your team members
Repeat these questions to every member of the organization including employees of your key suppliers
A case in point
Recently we worked with one of the leading retail companies in India. We implemented balanced scorecard system for their sales department with over 200 odd sales executives spread across India. One of the scores now people had to maintain was the number of new dealers appointed in A class towns. Within 3 months, company was executing lot of dealer contracts. Simple, as sales people started tracking their numbers on how many dealer deals they brought to the table they were able to know where they were against the goals and they were immediately motivated to fill the gap.
I can site hundreds of such example from my experience in implementing such as system. One of our flagship clients United Breweries could achieve its ambitious sales from new products due to such a clear track on sales of new products at sales executive level.
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